10 Must-Reads That Celebrate the Expanse of the American West

Set near Denver, this National Book Award winner is utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life in the High Plains. From the unsettled lives of four generations emerges a vision of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station.

At once a majestic journey, a significant work of history, and a moving personal saga, this is the journey of a lifetime: an epic quest to travel the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way, in a covered wagon with a team of mules. A wildly ambitious work of nonfiction, it is a book with a heart as big as the country it crosses.

Moving from a trailer home in Iowa to a sprawling ranch in Ishawooa, Wyoming, this is the extraordinary tale of the irrepressible courage and great spunk it takes to turn grievous loss, wrath, and recrimination into reconciliation, homecoming, and forgiveness.

Many of us have seen the ineffably beautiful Ang Lee film starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, but how many have read the Annie Proulx short story that was the basis for it? Originally published in The New Yorker in 1997, this elegant literary work manages to convey the magnitude of the film in very few pages—and is a revelation for those who believe the short story too narrow to contain multitudes. If you love this story, you'll want to read the original story collection, Close Range.

Following the parallel lives of a young man and a wolf on a remote, windswept ranch in southwest Montana, this gripping memoir celebrates the breathtaking beauty of some of the harshest land in the world.

This novel is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman and her family as they struggle to build a life amid the fields of waving grass and tall corn that dot Nebraska’s hardscrabble plains. Willa Cather’s masterpiece is an elegy to those whose persistence and strength helped build the American frontier.

The enthralling true story of the conflict between the expanding American West and the Sioux warriors who stood in its way, this acclaimed bestseller recounts the life of Red Cloud, the only Native American in history to defeat the United States Army in war.

This semi-autobiographical novel about the power and beauty of nature l inspired the classic film of the same name. The story of a Presbyterian family from turn-of-the century Montana for whom "there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," it focuses on the relationship of two brothers: Older Norman who is try to straighten out his wild younger brother, Paul.

A love story, an adventure, and an epic of the frontier, this Pulitzer Prize— winning classic is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness of America. Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove and meet an unforgettable assortment of heroes and outlaws, whores and ladies, Indians and settlers. Richly authentic, beautifully written, always dramatic this is a book to that will make you laugh, weep, and dream.

Ivan Doig, who passed away earlier this year and was one of the frontier’s great chroniclers, revisits the American West in the early twentieth century in this evocative novel, bringing to life a society that has long since vanished and the eccentric individuals and idiosyncratic institutions that made it thrive.